Five teams from Oakham through to TeenTech Awards final!

Published by Oakham School on Wednesday 25th of May 2016

Five teams from Oakham School have competed against hundreds of other teams from around the country to all win places in the final of the TeenTech Awards! This was a particularly outstanding result, given it was the first time the School has entered the competition! The TeenTech Awards challenge students to work in teams (of up to three) to look at problems large and small, and to see if they can use their imagination and think creatively to find a better way of doing things. The Award was set up to help young people understand their true potential in the contemporary STEM workplace. “What drew us to the competition,” says Darryl Toerien, Head of Library at Oakham School, who coordinated the entries, “is the unique emphasis that it places on both the design process and the research process. Given the reputation that Oakham School has for its excellence in both of these fields, I was confident that we could compete at the very highest level. I’m particularly thrilled however, given just how popular the competition is, that every single team from the School won a place in the final.” Oakham’s teams entered a wide range of different ideas – all of which impressed the judges enough to make it through to the final: · Team Gust: an ergonomically-redesigned cordless hairdryer · Team MuseHub: an app-based platform for connecting aspiring producers with aspiring musicians · Team My Pet Plant: a plant that monitors its environmental conditions and reports on them to a mobile device, possibly in the form of a game · Team Pet Connect.: a dog-tracking collar with social media potential · Team K-Charge: a school shoe that converts kinetic energy into electrical energy to charge mobile devices. Oakham’s five teams will be taking part in the final on 20 June at the Royal Society in London. If they win their categories they will have the honour of receiving their awards from HRH the Duke of York at Buckingham Palace.